College & Career Readiness

Supporting Excellence: A Framework for Developing, Implementing, and Sustaining a High-Quality District Curriculum

A framework that provides instructional leaders and staff with a core set of criteria for what a high-quality curriculum entails. This guide includes annotated samples and exemplars from districts around the country. It also provides actionable recommendations for developing, implementing, and continuously improving upon a district curriculum, ensuring that it reflects shared instructional beliefs and common, high expectations for all students.

The purpose of this booklet is to help school districts across the country get ready for the new PARCC and SBAC assessments in English language arts. The booklet will briefly summarize important features of both major common core assessments—PARCC and SBAC—outline major challenges that school districts will need to attend to when planning for these assessments, and present proposals and recommendations to school districts to help them in the planning process.

Indicators of Success, A Guide for Assessing District-Level Implementation of College-and Career-Readiness Standards

This document is designed as a self-assessment tool for districts to gauge their progress in implementing college- and career-readiness standards. While we hope that the document is useful to a wide range of staff throughout the district, the tool was primarily designed to help central office leaders and staff assess
implementation at a systems level.

Beyond Test Scores: What NAEP Results Tell Us About Implementing the Common Core in Our Classrooms

n this report, the Council analyzes student performance on 2013 released NAEP items that reflect the content and rigor of the common core standards, explores how and where classroom instruction may have fallen short of preparing students to succeed at such tasks, and discusses what changes to curriculum and instruction might help districts advance student achievement.